


Perfect

by eachuaine



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alex Hawke - Freeform, F/F, Fem!Fenris, Mention of Past Sexual Assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:18:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22180123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eachuaine/pseuds/eachuaine
Summary: She’d never wanted to kill anyone like this before. She’d never been so cold with rage.Never.
Relationships: Fenris/Female Hawke
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32





	Perfect

When Alex was little, she got in a fight with a boy in Lothering. A _real_ fight, and the first of many to come, Maker bless. She couldn’t for the good goddamn life of her remember what it was that got an eight year old heated enough to break another child’s nose (frogs, perhaps, or apple cobbler. She’d always been funny about her cobbler) but she remembered what came after as though it had happened yesterday.  
  
Father was called up to the Chantry. He arrived bone-tired and soaked with sweat and druffalo manure to find his baby girl steaming on the steps with bloody knuckles while her victim bawled in the arms of the Revered Mother. His expression was weary and stern.  
  
“Take a walk,” he’d said. “Now, please.”  
  
So she did.   
  
It wasn’t a long walk. She mostly just stomped around in the fields until she calmed down and realized that maybe she shouldn’t have smeared that poor boy’s nose across his face after all. She ran all the way back to the Chantry, apologized and promised the boy she’d show him all the best honeysuckle bushes and bring him the fattest frogs and would never, _ever_ hit him again, complete with waterworks and everything, and after the two of them shared a sticky, snotty, tearful hug, Father smiled and nodded at the Revered Mother and took Alex home.  
  
He had always been full of little kernels of wisdom like that, and with him gone, she tried to apply that tactic to her life as often as she could. It had saved Carver countless ass beatings, as well as at least two of Gamlen’s windows, Knight-Captain Cullen’s jaw (nice, unbroken jaw that it was), and the lives of half the nobles in Kirkwall. It was a good tactic. A great tactic.   
  
But not today.  
  
Today, nothing would help.  
  
The Hanged Man was a splintered, smashed, scorched, frozen wasteland of overturned chairs and tables and pulverized bottles, all tastefully splattered in a healthy dose of gore. All of the patrons booked it when the fighting started, leaving behind only the bartender, who hadn’t yet worked his balls out from under his lungs so he could come out from behind the counter and survey the damage. Varania was gone. Fenris had also fled. Now it was just Alex, Anders, Varric, and Isabela—and Danarius’s body, laying face-down on the floor in a rapidly growing puddle of his own blood.  
  
But that hardly counted.  
  
Alex was dimly aware that, at some point, the others had started talking, but she couldn't hear them past the blood roaring in her ears. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the corpse. She couldn’t even blink.  
  
He’d been a man. Only a man, fragile as any of them, dead and gone so fast. Too fast. She hadn’t even gotten to touch Danarius before Fenris got to him—and that was simply unacceptable.   
  
She wasn’t finished with him.  
  
Alex put her boot on the back of his head and slowly eased her weight onto him. His nose pressed into the floor. Her heart pounded so hard she thought it might pop.  
  
“Hawke.”  
  
More pressure. Something in his face cracked minutely. Alex’s breath was coming hard. She was trembling.   
  
Someone touched her hand.  
  
 _“Hawke.”_  
  
She ripped her gaze away from Danarius and found Varric staring up at her, concerned. She glanced up and saw the same expression on the others’ faces.  
  
“I need to go for a walk,” she heard herself say.  
  
She turned on her heel and marched for the door. Aveline was there with a squad of guards as soon as she opened it, her face white with tight-lipped fury, but something in Alex’s expression stopped her.  
  
“This,” Alex said, jerking her thumb at the chaos behind her. “I want this gone. I don’t care if you have to lick the Viscount’s chamber pot for the next ten years to get it done.”  
  
Aveline nodded tersely. Paused.  
  
“And Fenris? Is she—“  
  
“I don’t know,” Alex said, brushing past her. 

—

She walked all over the city.   
  
She started in Lowtown. She walked through the houses. She walked through the alienage. She walked up and down steps, through alleys and under clotheslines, and when she ran out of room she went to Darktown and walked there too; and then the docks, and then the Gallows, and then the coast, and the whole time she was walking she thought about Danarius.  
  
She thought she knew. She thought she got it, thought she understood. The markings, the pain, being forced to kill, being humiliated. Being _owned_. She thought she had a grasp on the whole picture. But she didn’t. Not really. Because Danarius had—he—  
  
 _’Do I detect a note of jealousy?’_ His voice, there, in her brain. Burned there like a firebrand. _’It's not surprising. She is rather skilled, isn’t she?’_  
  
 _‘Shut your mouth, Danarius!’_  
  
That look on Fenris’s face, that rage and fear and _shame—_  
  
 _’She is rather skilled, isn’t she?’_  
  
That night, three years ago, when she flinched under Alex’s hands, when she ran and she didn’t know _why—_  
  
 _'Don’t.' Fenris’s eyes were bright and wide in the firelight. 'Don’t hold me down, Hawke.'_  
  
 _'I won’t.' She kissed her jaw. 'I’m sorry. I won’t. Here—you can be on top.'_  
  
Alex sobbed. That bastard, that _fucking bastard_ had put his hands on Fenris, and she had failed her because _she didn’t know._  
  
She’d never wanted to kill anyone like this before. She’d never been so cold with rage.  
  
Never.

—

It was hours before she went to find Fenris. She wanted to track her down from the moment she stepped foot outside the Hanged Man, but Alex knew she couldn’t let her see her like this. Anger was not what she needed right now—so she stayed away as long as she could bear, and when she thought that she was starting to come back down to normal human levels of emotion, she made a beeline for Hightown.   
  
The moon was out. Alex’s feet ached, and her head throbbed, but she wouldn’t let Fenris pass one more hour alone in uncertainty.   
  
She used her _I'm a Templar, let me the fuck in_ knock when she got to the mansion, and received no response. She didn’t wait; she blasted the lock with a lick of flame until it melted, red hot, and she kicked open the door. It didn’t matter. She’d buy a Fenris a thousand more locks, if that’s what she wanted—and she didn’t try to be quiet, either. Fenris needed to know it was her in the house. She wouldn’t go one more goddamn day without accommodating her anxieties. Not one.   
  
Alex found her in her room, where she always was. She was sitting on the sofa, elbows braced on her knees with a bottle of wine in her hands. She looked up when Alex entered. Alex stopped dead in her tracks.  
  
She'd been crying.  
  
She’d never seen Fenris cry before.  
  
“He’s gone,” Fenris said, voice brittle—and then her expression buckled, and she lowered her face into her hands to hide it. Alex tossed her staff aside and strode over to her.  
  
“Fen—“  
  
“I don’t understand,” Fenris rasped. “I hated him. I should feel _better.”_  
  
“Hush.” Alex sat beside her and wrapped her up in her arms, and if she tensed—and she did—she didn’t flinch away. “It’s all right.”  
  
“It’s not,” Fenris choked out. “It is _not_ all right. You heard what Varania said. I _fought_ for these markings. They were _my_ choice.”  
  
She didn’t know what to say. What _could_ she say?   
  
“And I lied. When you asked me if I had ever—“ She couldn’t quite get the words out. “When you asked me if there was ever anyone else. There was. It was him.”   
  
Alex’s hands curled into fists in the back of Fenris’s shirt. She wanted to rip that man apart. She wanted to _break_ him.  
  
“I'm disgusting,” Fenris said, voice dripping with venom.“He has _polluted_ me—“  
  
Alex pulled away and took Fenris's face in her hands.  
  
“Stop,” she said, voice hard. “Stop _right_ fucking there. I won’t hear another word of it. Look at me, Fen. _Look at me.”_  
  
It was hard for her at first—eye contact was never easy, even at the best of times—but Fenris met her gaze.  
  
“You are _perfect_ ,” Alex said. “Do you hear me? You’re the most perfect fucking thing I have ever seen in my stupid, ridiculous, cock-up of a life—“  
  
“Hawke.“ Fresh tears spilled down Fenris’s face, and she curled her fingers around Alex’s wrist.  
  
“—and I don’t care, I don’t care if you lied, fuck, Fenris, I would too—“  
  
 _“Hawke—“_  
  
“—and I don’t care about the markings or the magisters or your sister or any of it. The only thing I care about is _you_ , and the fact that I can’t bring that bastard back and kill him again for you.” Alex brushed her thumbs across Fenris’s cheeks, smoothing away tears. “You’re not disgusting or polluted or ruined or broken or _anything_. You’re amazing and beautiful and I want you and I _love_ you—“ she was going too fast, now, saying things that Fenris might not be ready to hear, but she couldn’t stop. “—and if you don’t love me back—if you can’t—that’s all right, but I’ll never _ever_ stop loving you. Never ever ever.”  
  
Fenris looked up at her, broken, pained, awed, hopeful. Her eyes shone with tears.  
  
“I left,” she whispered.  
  
“I don’t care.”  
  
“I wasn’t—I wanted it, it was just too much—“  
  
Alex kissed her forehead.   
  
“I know, baby, I know.”  
  
“I hurt you—“  
  
“You could punch me in the teeth and I’d smile and say thank you, Fen.”  
  
That earned her a waterlogged laugh—but the little smile on Fenris’s face dropped, and she did that thing that Alex liked—the thing that killed her—and looked away shyly and asked ever so softly, “Can I… if you’ll have me…?”  
  
Alex tilted her head so she was forced to look at her.  
  
“Come home, Fenris,” she said, slowly and clearly.   
  
Fenris closed her eyes, let out a long breath, and said quietly, “Okay.”  
  
Alex answered her by scooping her up into her arms with a grunt and carrying her to the door. Fenris latched onto her shoulders with pointy, _pointy_ gauntlets.  
  
“Wait. My sword—“  
  
“Leave your sword,” Alex said. “I’m the Champion of fucking Kirkwall. If anyone tries to hurt you I’ll fucking kill them.”


End file.
